I just watched a YouTube video showcasing the differences between the kids born and raised in the 60s and 70s and those who were born in the mid-2000s (Gen Z basically). The whole video had me laughing, shaking my head, agreeing with the guy narrating the thing, and saying "Yes!" or "You're damn right" on most of it.
Times were different. We went to church. We walked to school with or without our friends (my first-grade teacher lived across the street, so yeah, I made it to class on time. She walked me from Kindergarten to fifth grade every single day! She carried a Winchester rifle too, and yes, we shot game hens and rabbits on the way to and from school. Not lying.) Mrs. Earp's husband was related to THE Earps. She was rough and tough to boot.
As kids, we didn't try to get in trouble. We were quite aware that if we got in trouble at school we got in more trouble at home. At the parent-teacher conference, the kids sat out in the hall and we were told to stay quiet. If my parents had come out of the room and I wasn't sitting right where they left me I would not be able to sit down for two Sundays in a row. It was that way. My teachers never lied. They didn't give me any grade I didn't deserve, and they never made excuses for me either. Ethics were a thing in our day.
Some of the more dangerous things we did as kids have been talked about and demonstrated in so many YouTube and TikTok videos. We slid down hot galvanized steel slides that were banked on concrete and had rivets sticking out where the rails were connected. We scalded ourselves, fell off, and scraped our knees, hands, heads, and elbows. We got over it. We used the water from a garden hose to wash off, and if we were thirsty we drank from it. We rode in cars without seat belts, with our parents smoking in the car, and maybe - - just maybe one of them would roll the window down an inch or so to let the smoke out, but not in the summer; they couldn't afford to let the cool air out.
We became spit-friends and blood-brothers, even if we were girls. We cut our hands or fingers and mushed them together swearing our oaths to remain besties forever. I think I am still keeping that promise with Jeannie -- so they did actually work. We were given pocket knives around the age of six or seven, and guns around the age of nine or ten. We were taught to use both. I think my dad taught me that I could kill, gut, and skin a fish or a squirrel with my knife - - and he may have mentioned that if a boy tried to kiss me I could do the same to him.
We tried out for sports and for cheerleading. We weren't accepted just because we showed up. We had to keep our grades above a B, not a C...and if we dared to show our faces with a C on our report cards we had to do the dishes and take out the trash all the way through the next nine weeks until the next reports came back with better grades. It just was the way that it was.
We played "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" with a stick pin that was run through a ribbon. We were spun around in circles a dozen times and set loose to try and find the paper with the donkey on it, and we were blindfolded. There is no end to what could have happened and most likely did. We snuck drinks from our dad's beers and finished off mom's coffee at tender ages. We were swimming in lakes, ponds, and creeks with the fish, turtles, gars, and whatever else decided to show up. I remember tossing a snake at my sister when it swam in front of me.
There were trees to climb and I'm not talking about lower branches. If you were caught sitting on a lower branch you better have a book in your hands; otherwise, you called a chicken. We threw dirt clods that were hard as rocks at each other from greater heights and chased the culprits down the streets on our bikes without caring if a car was in front of us or behind us. We knew the drivers had eyes and could see us. I don't remember having a set of lawn darts, but we played it when we went to my cousins' houses. Yes, we tried to spike each other; it's what you did.
Another thing we did was ring doorbells and run away, or we'd ring them and stand there waiting for friends to come out and play. We rang doorbells to hear them chime. We usually got a look from the father or mother of the kid we just said goodbye to, but sometimes other people's doorbells were cooler than mine were. We prank-called people too. You know we did. We didn't do all the mean nasty sinister stuff like telling people they had three days to live. No, we just said things like "Hey, is your fridge running? Better catch it!!" We were dorks. We were really really cool though.
Our skates strapped right onto our tennis shoes and we had to tighten them with a key. They were metal, and the wheels were metal too. The tire swings we affixed to our trees hadn't been cleaned and if it rained it rained, and we dealt with the water sloshing all over us. We nibbled on the tar that the city crews laid down on our streets, but not before we popped all the bubbles. What? It didn't get hot enough where you live to have your street tar bubble up? Well, sometimes you had to use a stick so you didn't get burned. You know what else we had back then? We had horny toads. (Brown Texas Horned
Toads) They were everywhere.
I miss those kids. I miss that my kids were probably the last age of kids to have spit fights, impromptu mud-wrestling, or sleepovers. Times have changed, but not for the better. I can't wait to get to heaven and do these things again -- maybe not the door-knocking thing but yeah...the door-knocking thing too. I'll do it.
Photo Credit: Reddit
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